In today's portable electronic devices, such as mobile phones, selecting random text from electronic text displayed on the screen of the mobile phone requires a certain operation associated with the selected text that is not easy. For example, if there's random text content that needs to be searched with a search engine, the content needs to be cut and pasted to a web search box unless the text is preconfigured as a recognized key word.
For example, contacting a person whose full or partial name appears on electronic text displayed on the screen of the portable electronic device requires a cumbersome process. Such process may include scrolling through a long list of contacts to find the contact information of the person whose name appears on the text displayed on the screen of the portable device. However, this process may not be necessary when the text is in a predetermined format, such as a phone number or an e-mail address. Nevertheless, this process is cumbersome and in many occasions inaccurate when the user of the portable electronic device has too many contacts.
There is a software solution to this cumbersome process such termed gestureCall. This software provides a way to call a person whose name is displayed on the screen of the portable electronic device by using configurable drawings executed on a touch screen of the portable electronic device. However, the applicability of this software is very limited since the software requires assigning a different drawing per contact point or person. Therefore, when the number of contacts configured with gestureCall is large, it is not feasible to expect that the user of the portable electronic device remember all different types of drawings assigned to each contact point or person. Also, this software does not provide any capability of selecting random text displayed on the screen of the portable electronic device to find certain contact point or person and invoke a certain operation such as e-mail, call or SMS.
There are other methods and systems for dynamically generating search links embedded in content. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,788,245 B1 to Eddings et al. (hereinafter Eddings) describes a mechanism to automatically embed generated search link. However, this mechanism requires full analysis of the document each time a new electronic text is opened and the text need to be of a pre-recognized topic to find search terms. Therefore, it is not possible to select a random text to invoke a search without fully analyzing the documents.
Meanwhile, US 2002/0065820 A1 to Enns (hereinafter Enns) discloses a process for automatically identifying a telephone number in electronic text. For example, Enns describes a process to identify a potential phone number from an electronic text. However, this process does not consider a case where a full name or part of the name appears in electronic text displayed on the portable electronic device, associates the name with a contact when the contact is selected, and makes an automatic phone call or sends an e-mail. Therefore, these types of actions are not possible with this approach.
Finally, US 2010/0162181 A1 to Shiplacoff et al. (hereinafter Shiplacoff) discloses interpreting gesture input including introduction or removal of a point of contact while a gesture is in progress. Shiplacoff does not describe a mechanism to perform operations associated with a gesture on an existing contact point. In other words, Shiplacoff is not intended to associate a randomly selected text string to find a contact point and make an automatic calling.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.